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Portrait of curator and architect Paula Nascimento
Mario Macilau
Design Indaba
Cape Town, South Africa
Angolan architect and curator Paula Nascimento was selected by Design Indaba to take part in our collaborative initiative with Google Arts & Culture, titled Colours of Africa.
Africa is known for its bold, unapologetic use of colour. Stories are told in pigments, tones and hues; a kaleidoscope as diverse as the cultures and peoples of the continent. For the initiative, we asked 60 African creatives to capture the unique spirit of their country in a colour which represents home to them.
The projects they have created are personal and distinct stories of Africa, put into images, videos, texts and illustrations. Each artist has also attempted to articulate what being African means to their identity and view of the world.
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Details
- Title: Portrait of curator and architect Paula Nascimento
- Creator: Mario Macilau
- What it Means to be African: It is to be simultaneously individual and to be part of a whole, to live in the present without disclosing its difficult past.
- Subject: Paula Nascimento
- Rationale: One hears very often of the impact of the red sand or even the smell of earth when hearing people describe their experience in any African country or city. It is almost a cliché. For anyone who has lived in Luanda for most their life, this is also a very vivid image. This red sand is so characteristic it is visible from the air and from the ground. When it's dry, the sand is brownish. But when it rains, it becomes deep red and starts to smell... a strong smell, the smell of nostalgia, the scent of my childhood. My colour of choice is inspired by this smell and is a journey to find this specific tonality of red, which is perhaps only really attainable during the rainy season. During the cold and dry season in Angola there is no rain. So, to find the precise tonality of colour, I had to conduct some blind experiments. The first step consisted of finding the sand, digging to the reddish tone possible, within the constraints of movement within the city. As well as digging, I tried to find small references in the colour palettes of paintings, in texts, in any media possible. The experiments were an attempt to re-awaken the smell of rain that is expelled from the earth, that is characteristic of my childhood... The smell guided the choice of colour. There were some challenges: the lack of direct sunlight (sunlight is a significant factor in the process), the pH of the water that was very different from the rainwater. We managed to alter the pH of water and got better results. The three experiments were very similar in effect, the colour obtained is not quite the deep red from memory, but it is close. I tried to mould a small brick with this sand, but it always cracked. The sand and these cracks form the material submission for Angola to Colours of Africa.
- Project: Colors of Africa
- Location: Angola
- Lead Quote: When it's dry, the sand is brownish. But when it rains, it becomes deep red and starts to smell... a strong smell, the smell of nostalgia, the scent of my childhood.
- Hex Code: 4F180E
- Colour Choice: Red Earth
- Biography: Born in Luanda, Angola, Paula Nascimento is an architect and curator with degrees from the Architectural Association School of Architecture and from the LSB University in London. She collaborated with architecture studios in Oporto and in London before founding Beyond Entropy Africa with Stefano Rabolli Pansera in 2011 – a research-based collective network that operates in the fields of architecture-urbanism-visual arts and geopolitics. Nascimento has also been a consultant on a variety of projects including the Angola Pavilion for Expo Milano 2015 and often collaborates with different artist institutions and collectives, both on the African continent and abroad. She curated the African Galleries at Arco Lisbon 2019 and 2020. As an architect, Nascimento collaborates with the Angola Commission for Expo, working as a project director for the award-winning Angola Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015 and with projects for the Angola Pavilion at Expos Astana 2017 and Dubai 2020. She has received several awards including the Golden Lion Award 2013 at the Venice Biennale, ArcVision Women for Expo Special Award (2015) and African Architecture Awards in 2017.
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